These findings provide evidence that the ultimate goal of the visual system is not simply to construct internally an exact reproduction of the external world, Meister and his colleagues write in Nature. Rather, the system seeks to extract from the onslaught of raw visual information the few bits of data that are relevant to behavior. This entails the discarding of signals that are less useful, and dynamic retinal adaptation provides a means of stripping from the visual stream predictable and therefore less newsworthy signals.
That sounds pretty similar to the way the rest of the nervous system works-- you might be aware of the feeling of putting your pants on, but you don't have to deal with a barrage of "you're wearing your pants. You're wearing pants. You have pants on. Linen pants." all day from your legs.
eta context, because I am unaware of the passage of time